


formed wrong

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:33:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: No matter what anyone did, they are no longer those soft forming things. They have formed, and they formed wrong.All this effort is to correct a structure after it has solidified. Possibly a lifelong effort.
Relationships: Azula & Ozai & Zuko, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Kudos: 44





	formed wrong

**Author's Note:**

> my dad is an abusive piece of shit and this is the best coping mechanism ive got. i just needed to put this out there  
> tw : this whole thing is about abuse and how it affects you. please be careful.

Zuko, Azula thinks, could never really understand. 

There is something to be said about the uniqueness of experience they share. No one else quite experienced  Ozai like they did. Even their mother had been a fully formed adult person who entered into a contract with the man by choice, and he broke his commitments to her. 

Raising your children is not like that. Therapist after therapist has told her how her father messed with her brain as she grew. Stunted her development, and her brother’s, while that collection of neurons and connections in her skull was still a squishy little thing. Still forming, permanently wrongly. 

Oh, but that too she was not allowed to believed. Everyone just kept telling her how better times are over the horizon, how it is possible to heal from it all, to grow beyond. 

In the same breath that they used to tell her how her fundamentals are all twisted. 

Azula scoffs. 

And so, everyone says and she knows. The experience that the siblings share is unique. The experience of forming from nothing into something solid, adult, permanent, under someone like  Ozai . Of being influenced and constructed by him, back when they were still  moldable . They are not, now, not anymore, and Azula knows this. Holds on to it as all those white coats tell her she can get better. They seem to know what they are doing, but no matter what anyone did, they are no longer those soft forming things. They have formed, and they formed wrong.

All this effort is to correct a structure after it has solidified. Possibly a lifelong effort.

Yet, it is not the same. Zuko is brought in and regarded as the one person in the world that could possibly truly understand, that formed in those circumstances with her. But it is not, not really.

Zuko, with his uncle, his escape, his friends, his  _ redemption _ , could never really understand. 

He has always hated their f-  Ozai . Even as a young boy he was kind, and he was abused, he kept his down and obeyed, believed in his father, but he hurt. He cried, he felt wrong. 

Azula never did. She loved her father. Basked in his praise, his affections, his guidance. His presence was comforting, perfect, ideal. Every time someone told her she acted or sounded like him she felt right. Her father felt right. 

To form like that. To  internalize those lessons. To code those traits those beliefs that personality into her brain into her moral compass into her being, back when she was learning to be a person at all. 

And then to  realize it was all wrong. Toxic. Manipulative. Abusive. 

It was a singularly unique experience. Even Zuko, who came the closest, could never truly understand. 

She had never known any other way to be, any other kind of parenting. She loved her father and that’s what her father was like and there was no questioning any of it. It had always been her truth, the only one. 

They took it all away from her.

And they were right. That is not how parents love their children. That is not how everyone is taught to look at others. Like they always have motives, like they can only be used for your gain, not ever to form real connections with. That is unhealthy, inhumane, wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Everyone tried to tell her. Her father had been wrong. He should not have treated her like he did. She was brought up wrong. 

And they were going to help her. 

But what could they do,  really? How does it help to be told to learn to know to understand all  that? It was done. She was never going to be brought up correctly. She was never going to get what everyone claimed was every child’s right. Healthy parenting. Being truly loved. No one deserved what happened to her, it was not her fault. And she understood, now, really, how all it was wrong. 

But it doesn’t fucking change the fact that that is her dad. That’s what she got and she will never have another. 

She will never get to form correctly.

She tries to heal, then. Begin to learn to take away the power he has over her. Allow herself connections, compassion, ‘ weaknesses’ . And she thinks maybe she’s got it, grown beyond his shadow, found love and family even when he trained her to be cold and distant. Calculating. Always. She chooses to trust, instead. To let people in. To believe she did not deserve to be treated that way, to expect more from her life than that. She doesn’t feel the need to fix, anymore. To understand him, because she knows how he thinks, how he trained her to think. She grows beyond the influence he had on her constantly. She thinks she’s healing. 

When she discovers she is wrong, it is not a jarring sudden realization that crashes her down to earth. It is more like being lost in a fog that picks up into a storm, lots of warning and precursor that she does not  recognize , until she’s caught in the darkness swirling around her, earth crushing her, suffocating, buckling, collapsing. He’s still there, inside her, everywhere. 

She’s tried to be rid of her fear, of her need to always be perfect, of the lessons he taught to only view others as enemies, current or potential, to only care for their use to her. She rejected and learned better lessons and reached out to people, chose to love and trust and depend and belong. 

And she hurt them all. Immeasurably, constantly, over and over. Some stuck  around longer than others but all she could do was to keep hurting them.

I do not know how to be loved. 

She hears them sometimes, how Sokka loves Zuko. Loves him through his hurt parts. Tells him his past doesn’t make him broken, or less worthy of happiness. It makes him stronger. Tells him he survived and made the right choices  in spite of being raised and scarred by such a wrong man. Tells him he’s inherently good, kind, and  Ozai couldn’t burn it out of him.

Azula is inherently irredeemable.

And all of this effort has been to fight that which is inherent, coded into her brain like paw prints in drying concrete. 

It feels like pulling teeth, or perhaps more accurately, like pulling flared heads of arrows fired into her skin years ago, that she hadn’t noticed were still stuck in her while she worked so hard to heal herself of their effects. Pulling them out does a million times more damage than they did when they struck her. And everyone agrees they did damage going in. 

She doesn’t know if she can be whole, after all. Whether it’s like the concrete, impressions embedded when it was still possible, and now permanently wrong, or whether it’s like those arrows, damaging but can be healed from. She doesn’t know how many of those arrowheads she’ll find, remnants of his personality in her. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to be safe for anyone. To love and be loved by and not constantly  inadvertently hurt them. 

She thinks maybe it’s like many old battle wounds are. Set and healed, but still a little wrong, a little twisted and scarred, bothering during late nights or cold winters. Except those wounds occurred after the body formed. 

She never knew what it was to be whole and right in the first place.


End file.
